So I've been trying to write SCPs for a while and most of the reactions I've gotten for my drafts (before I dumped them) were "Meh" and a criticism I frequently got was that I didn't have a "hook". Now, I realize this is a broad and somewhat abstract question but what exactly makes a good hook? What makes an SCP interesting? Can it even be defined? Are there examples?

Also, to the senior/more prolific writers, how long did it take before you had a successful/stable SCP and how many revisions did you have to go through?

There are other threads like these out there (search bar is your friend!) but granted, those are old, so I guess it's okay to get some fresh ideas.

For the record, I don't think I ever learned a formal definition of "hook", so my words here are just personal opinion.

I think what interests people varies between readers, but I've always felt that the hook is what snags a person and draws them in, keeping their attention. Usually for me it's something in the article that offers a different perspective or a novel idea, such as that knife god and another individual trapped as trees that Dmatix wrote. A hook may also come a little later in an article (though I think that might be harder to do, since you need to have your reader committed to reading the material up to the hook). It's something that opens up your readers' eyes to something that they may not have thought about before.

It took me… dunno. Apparently I posted my first stable SCP 11 days after I joined, and my first successful SCP was 19 days (my first article ever was a coldpost that hovered at -8, then a few weeks later shot to -16 or something). I remember going through several reviews for the first, and tons for the second. It takes time to get a feel for the style, and sometimes weeks to months to come up with the idea and the inspiration/motivation to write it.

I actually joined the site since I discovered it about a week after hearing that my violin mentor of 10+ years passed away. The first article I wrote to try and immerse myself in the SCP universe, the second I wrote to put my emotions to words. Authors operate differently, but the general idea I think is to try not to force it.

I lurked for a month before making an account and beginning to write. It hunk it took a few weeks or so to get an article to stay; I didn't realize it at the time, but those that had helped me made me understand how to make a hook, which was revealing your SCP's backstory.

Come to think of it, another thing that helped was reading all the articles. 'Cept I skipped a lot through the Series 1 because I eventually grew bored of objects that did a thing.

Nowadays, the hook for most SCPs is that it tells an interesting and engaging story, whether explicitly in the article, or implicitly in the background. And while this is definitely a valid way of doing it, it's still possible to write an "object that does a thing", as Accelerando puts it, if it's interesting enough. Although the cliché list is somewhat outdated, some aspects still hold true: over-the-top objects generally don't hold up well, a "magic object" that you could find in a roleplaying game and want to own won't hold up well, and a "cursed magic object" that's the same thing, only with an arbitrary downside, won't hold up well.

Just remember that, at heart, we're an urban horror writing community. Your article and/or the story associated with it should make an impression. Sometimes mystery upholds the horror/creepiness, sometimes you want an obvious story.